Tag Archives: babies

When I produced my little bundle joy six years ago I though, rather naively, that I would not be addressing any questions regarding baby making for at least 10 years but little did I know that as Lulu as I sat in a bath one Tuesday night recently she would say “mummy, how do you do sex?” OMG

My very litle girl

I didn’t want to scare her by saying words she didn’t understand, erection, vagina etc and I certainly didn’t want to make her feel like she had done something wrong by asking but goodness, I was not prepared. I was so conscious that I had to answer in a way that didn’t make sex seem bad or wrong – who can afford those psychiatrist bills when she is all grown up and blaming my crappy explanation on her dysfunctional sex life? But I didn’t want to be flippant either and avoid the subject. Were they discussing it at school? Had I missed the memo? So, I did what everyone does in situations where you have no idea what to do, I asked her a question back “oh ok darling, where did you hear the word sex?” I needed some sort of context. “Was it at school?” “no” “Did one of your friends say it?” no” “Where did you hear it?” “oh i just did”. I then asked her what she thought sex was? She said it was when a boy lies on top of a girl and they kiss, I started to panic, What had she seen? Where had she seen it? Why don’t I put parental controls on her iPad?? Instead I rely on her telling me when she comes across something inappropriate so we can discuss it but obviously my plan had failed. I had fallen at the first hurdle of grown up parenting. Then I remembered that I caught her watching YouTube clips of people kissing from the comedies she likes, Full House, Fuller House and of course on Gilmore Girls. I say caught, not because I don let her watch kissing but when I peered over her shoulder at the iPad she was shielding from me she was so embarrassed by the kissing scenes. These family comedies have the inevitable coming of age teen bit involving first boyfriends and first kisses etc, being walked in on by the little sister while ‘making out on the couch’ all golden family comedy scenes, ones that never occurred to me would produce questions from Lulu but I was foolish, of course she is wondering what is going on, the characters probably had the inevitable ‘parent teen’ chat about waiting until you are ready for sex blah blah blah

From what I could glean she was actually enquiring in relation to how babies are made, so I told her that when people are grown ups and in love and they want a baby thy have sex, which means the man puts his willy into the womans bottom because a lady has eggs in her tummy and the man can make this eggs into a baby- in have my home we don’t have two distinctive words and we currently rely on back and front bottom (arrrgghh how I hate that term) but I prefer it to flower, tuppence, fanny etc. I have asked many people what they refer to their vagina as to their children and have yet to come up with a word I can say without visibly cringing. Which is a shame because vaginas are pretty great. lu said ‘Oh, like a chicken has eggs inside her?” ‘yes, exactly” Anyway Lu seemed totally happy with this explanation, I asked her if she had any more questions to which she said no and it was back to the bath time Barbie party. Oh, she did ask if me and her daddy (my ex-husband) had ever had sex and I said “of course darling, otherwise how did we get you?.”

I did impress on Lu that having sex is a very serious thing and not to be taken lightly and that it was only for adults, not for children. As she gets older we will obviously discus the finer details but for now I was satisfied that I had answered in way that was age appropriate and addressed her queries. It was also an opportunity to talk about our private areas being just for us and that no one else should touch Lu there and if they did that she needs to tell mummy or daddy or a teacher. Exactly the same way if someone is horrible to her at school. I don’t want to make her fearful but it is a good age to start discussing personal boundaries and what is and isn’t acceptable.

I was relaying this tale to some friends who pointed put that maybe I should be more accurate re which bottom (front or back) so in passing yesterday I said to Lu that the willy went into the front bottom, she was horrified, “”How does it get in there?, in my mind I saw the missionary position as a good starting place but stopped short of saying it out loud and just re assured her it worked fine when necessary.

Lu makes me take her toys to work, frequently

It is not my intention to ever make Lu think that the only romantic relationship are those between men and women, and I have being using her Disney princess obsession to address this subject with her. Lu is totally on board with the idea that Princes can marry Princes and Princesses can marry Princesses and that the fundamental basis of any relationship is love and kindness, not gender. She is also aware that it is possible for two men who are together to have a baby, according to Lu they ask a lady to “get them one” (?) and that if two ladies are in love can “get their own baby”….

I had an awful dream this week. I was about four months pregnant and my waters broke and I knew that I would lose the baby but I went about my everyday life. Not able to accept the inevitable but being so so sad as I knew it was hopeless and the loss felt overwhelming. I thought if I can keep the baby inside me everything will be okay and none of this is real.

Didn’t think she would make it through the night, day 5 after she was born

And the reason this was so realistic and horrible is because I had lost a number of babies before I was luckily enough to have my daughter, Lucia. With each of those pregnancies I got a little further along before the sonographer said ‘I’m really sorry I can’t find a heart beat’. When I was pregnant with Lucia my waters broke at 28 weeks and while I thought ‘oh, how lovely we will be able to take our baby home later today, earlier than planed but hey ho’, Not able to accept that really it was unlikely she would live and really I thought that this was just another pregnancy that was a little further along than the others and that realistically I would probably have another number of miscarriages before we actually managed to carry a baby to full term, ridiculous huh?. As if that is how it works, that you get a bit further along each time you are pregnant until you hit the magic 40 week mark. But my 28 weeker did live, nine week in intensive care and then we could take her home,

With miscarriages, or in my experience anyway, once you are told your baby no longer has a heart beat you can wait for ‘nature to take its course’ and expel the baby or you can have an operation to have it removed. They do these ops on specific days of the week so you carry your dead baby inside you for at least a few days. These are only really options with early miscarriages. I know this sounds disturbing to some but to me I wanted to keep my baby inside me as long as possible, keeping it safe. I didn’t drink during my pregnancies but when I knew the babies had died I could have a drink if I wanted but the act of swallowing that first sip of wine felt so final, that when I took that sip it was acknowledging that the baby I was carrying was dead.

And then this week, a few days after my dream, a Facebook memory popped up of me at a cousin’s wedding a few years ago (see main picture). It was a few days after I had found out I was pregnant with my first baby and I was so thrilled. Little did I know that a few weeks later I would be in A&E bleeding and then a few weeks later being told ‘I’m really sorry…’.

Maybe subconsciously I had remembered that this time of year is the anniversary of my first pregnancy, I don’t know, but it made me feel sad. I always feel sad when I think of my lost babies, it make me weep, that never changes. The passage of time has enabled me to be able to not wake up crying even morning, to not cry every time I see a new born baby in the street, but the intensity of the pain in my broken heart doesn’t change however it no longer stops me in my tracks.

The day Lucia came home after 9 weeks in intensive care

I wholeheartedly believe that having Lucia has helped me deal with my grief hugely. I am grateful every day that I am lucky enough to have her, she isn’t a replacement for my lost babies, but for me I knew that the only thing that would help me after losing my babies was to have a baby in my arms. This isn’t the same for all people, I know this. I wanted to try and get pregnant again as soon as I had physically recovered from the operations but my ex husband was reticent, he thought I needed to psychologically recover first but I was desperate, I wanted/needed a baby. Getting pregnant was never a problem, usually happened with in the first two months of trying. Keeping them alive inside me was the problem. I found great comfort in the people and forums on social media I encountered who were going through the same thing. Whenever someone got pregnant you wished them luck and hoped that they had a #stickybean.

So, am I feeling nostalgic as a friend has commented? yes, I think I am, but not in a ‘wasn’t that a wonderful time, if I only I could relive it’, but in a ‘goodness wasn’t that a painful time in my life, and my, it still hurts now.’ I will be mindful of my self, look for signs that I am getting depressed and address them should they appear. But right now I am just a little wistful, wondering what the babies would have looked like, missing them and grieving them still, as I shall always do.

Now its just Lulu and me, her daddy left when she was two. She is my hope, my reason and my love. xxx